I'm trying to get the 2nd field into a variable with its configured size and memory together. Problem is the identity of the db table (active_sess_fost_frag9) is on 2 separate lines and so are the values

The reason I'm struggling is because I don't know what the tables names will be, there are thousands of them, so i need them in a for loop to capture each table name its configured size and actual size.

You could use a regex to parse the line as Bill has shown, or you could use the Text::CSV module, which IMO would be a more robust solution.

I might even extend the data structure to be a HoHoH to be able to include the first field as the base/first hash key. I do that because your code appears to indicate that you want to look for a specific first field.

I'll be using the DATA filehandle as Bill did in his example, but take note of the syntax I used on the commented out open call.

When I first saw Jeffersno1's original post, I thought that I was going to suggest a solution based on the split function. Then, seeing the two solutions proposed by Bill and you, I decided that there was no point suggesting a third solution.

With Jeffersno1's new post stating that there can be multiple spaces, I looked at the Text::CSV documentation and found it difficult to figure out what this module would do with such input or if it was even possible to change some configuration items to have it do the expected processing. It is also not practical to preprocess the lines to remove the extra spaces (or we would need to preprocess the whole file). So I tought: OK, I'll try to give a a solution modifying Bill's proposal and wait to see if FishMonger has an idea with the CSV module.

Just one small comment on your code: I think it would be slightly simpler (and possibly slightly faster if the file is large) to do the tr/// before the split:

Yes, you are right, the split I suggested creates an initial empty field not working properly with the rest of the program. An aadditional djustment is needed to either to change the split (the way you did or using an array slice on split), or shift the empty field, or changing the @row subscripts when filling the HoHoH.

It really depends: are you using Bill's or FishMonger's proposal? Depending on which you are using you will not need the same syntax for accessing your data. The best would be that you show what data dumper is displaying.